Things That Never Seem to Change

[MisterCairo]

 

[tonyb]

Barn cats can be very pleasant company, and sometimes they can turn into house cats without you ever realizing it.

A few years back, when visiting the dairy farming relatives in Wisconsin, my dewy-eyed bride asked my uncle the name of a cat on the premises. He smiled and told her it was a barn cat, one of a few around there, and didn't have a name.

A couple three or four of his younger granddaughters were playing with a kitten that day -- making a little bed for it out of grass clippings, etc. The next day we found the kitten dead, from who knows what. My uncle picked it up by its tail and tossed it in the garbage.

 

[Zombie_61]

I suspect that a cat could subsist healthily if not happily on a diet free of meat. Just as can humans, who also have flesh-ripping incisors and canines.

Humans are (or have evolved into being) omnivores, and can survive by eating a rather wide variety of things as long as they do not contain some form of toxin. But Miss Lizzie is correct when she stated above that cats are obligate carnivores--their biology differs from most other animals (including humans) and they must have some form of meat in their diet (or something of equal nutritional value to them) in order to survive. As such, anyone who decides their cat should eat a vegetarian diet is dooming it to a shortened life of poor health.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hear they have mammoth on special every Friday at the Siberian IGA. Fresh dug!

 

[Zombie_61]

And if you eat it all in 30 minutes, it's free.

 

[tonyb]

Humans are (or have evolved into being) omnivores, and can survive by eating a rather wide variety of things as long as they do not contain some form of toxin. But Miss Lizzie is correct when she stated above that cats are obligate carnivores--their biology differs from most other animals (including humans) and they must have some form of meat in their diet (or something of equal nutritional value to them) in order to survive. As such, anyone who decides their cat should eat a vegetarian diet is dooming it to a shortened life of poor health.

Cursory research indicates that it may indeed be possible for cats to subsist on a meat-free diet, but that those promoting such practices are mostly, as Lizzie put is, ideologues or peddlers of meatless cat food. Veterinarians appear to be in almost universal agreement that turning your cat vegetarian (let alone vegan) is taking a big, big risk with your cat's health.

The promoters of meatless cat diets cite what snake oil peddlers always cite: anecdotes. The detractors who allow for the possibility of a healthful yet meatless cat diet say that it isn't just the various and necessary nutritional components that might be derived from meatless sources but how they are metabolized by cats that gives them pause. So, for now, it's best to just forget about turning Mr. Whiskers vegetarian.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggie-cat-food/

 

[LizzieMaine]

The best part is that this really isn't all that removed from the commercials the American Meat Institute ran on radio in the mid-forties, when they sponsored "The Life Of Riley," starring noted meat-eater William Bendix. "MEAT is a COMPLETE food!"

 

[Trenchfriend]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Illusion

This great great movie isn't just about pacifism, friendship and solidarity. One of the POW in the first camp said, that He and his brother were sick and their doctor told them seriously, that they have to stop the meat-consumption, otherwise, they will die on going further. So, He stopped with meat and his brother didn't. He became healthy, again and his brother stood sick. So, He was drafted to military-service and his sick brother wasn't.

But a great cinematic advise for nutrition!

Today, such a movie would be called "green-alternative".

 

[GHT]

Yesterday evening, I saw a group of young teenagers that made me think of this thread. The boys were on skateboards practicing the art of flipping the board through 360 degrees and landing back on it. The skateboard was yet to be invented when I was their age but we used to have a great time with a roller skate and a book. You balance the book on the skate, sit on it and set off down a one in four hill. How we never ended up in an ambulance on the way to hospital still amazes me. I shudder at the stupidity of our antics back then.

 

[2jakes]

Grumbacher
Been using these paints for many years.
Some do leak oil & are not top of the line.
Nevertheless I like them.
I have always gotten very good results.

VS gut.
Not very durable. But are the most comfortable
tennis strings which I enjoy with good results.

And my trolex!

 

[HudsonHawk]

A few years back, when visiting the dairy farming relatives in Wisconsin, my dewy-eyed bride asked my uncle the name of a cat on the premises. He smiled and told her it was a barn cat, one of a few around there, and didn't have a name.

A couple three or four of his younger granddaughters were playing with a kitten that day -- making a little bed for it out of grass clippings, etc. The next day we found the kitten dead, from who knows what. My uncle picked it up by its tail and tossed it in the garbage.

We had a house cat when I was a kid that my sister named "Miss Cleopatra". She was a gorgeous calico half-Persian, but we never could keep her in the house. One day we took Cleo to my aunt's house out in the orange grove, and that cat had died and gone to heaven. She had so much fun we just left her with my aunt. She mostly fended for herself in the barn, eating what she caught and fishing her own minnows out of the lake. She lived until she was 22 years old like that (of course my aunt did provide some minimal amount of health and vet care). And if there was ever a Mousing Hall of Fame, Cleo was a first-ballot inductee. I need to find one like ol Cleo.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My last three cats have been domesticated ferals -- born wild, but acclimatized to indoor life. The first of this group was an Olympic level mouser, and the last day we lived in That Tourist Town up the road, she celebrated the impending move by catching and delivering to my bedroom a full-sized wharf rat. She also once successfully forced me to delay a trip of which she didn't approve by catching a live crow, bringing it into the apartment, looking up at me standing there with my suitcase in my hand, and very slowly and deliberately opening her mouth to release the bird, which then flapped and flew insanely around the place for the better part of an hour before I could capture it and let it out the window. All the while Nancy (for that was her name) sat on the floor and watched this with what can only be described as a smirk on her face.

My two subsequent cats, Keesa and the incumbent Carol, have shown little or no interest in the outdoors, which is fine by me. Raccoons, skunks, and rabbits all live in the junkyard out back, and I don't want to wake up in the night and find one of them capering around the bedroom thanks to feline activity.

 

[tonyb]

A cat came my way in 1978, it must've been, give or take a year. She was left behind by a free-spirited (read "flaky") hippie chick at the dog-patch compound where I resided at the time, in a converted chicken coop (others there lived in converted school buses and travel trailers and the like). The cat, whom I called "the kitty" until I came to drop the definite article, had been living with afore-mentioned hippie chick on an island in the San Juan chain, an island then accessible only by private boat, where she largely fended for herself.

The kitty was pregnant, by the way, and began delivering stillborn kittens on my bed. I didn't know nothin' about birthin' no kittens, but I figured they ought be born alive, so I gathered up the cat and took her to a nearby veterinary practice, where three live kittens were extracted from her via C-section.

I had that cat until she died, maybe a dozen years later. She came and went through a cat door at the back of the house I later moved into. She frequently brought in the rats she captured on her rounds. (Seattle is thick with rats, by the way. The stories I could tell.) My then-girlfriend told me she knew I would be arriving home in a matter of seconds because the cat, who apparently recognized the sound of my approaching car, would exit the house via the cat door, climb the fence and greet me in the driveway.

I loved that cat. I really did. She was exceptionally affectionate -- she purred, she drooled, she head-butted. I'll never forget her.

 

[belfastboy]

A cat came my way in 1978, it must've been, give or take a year. She was left behind by a free-spirited (read "flaky") hippie chick at the dog-patch compound where I resided at the time, in a converted chicken coop (others there lived in converted school buses and travel trailers and the like). The cat, who I called "the kitty" until I came to drop the definite article, had been living with afore-mentioned hippie chick on an island in the San Juan chain, an island then accessible only by private boat, where she largely fended for herself.

The kitty was pregnant, by the way, and began delivering stillborn kittens on my bed. I didn't know nothin' about birthin' no kittens, but I figured they ought be born alive, so I gathered up the cat and took her to a nearby veterinary practice, where three live kittens were extracted from her via C-section.

I had that cat until she died, maybe a dozen years later. She came and went through a cat door at the back of the house I later moved into. She frequently brought in the rats she captured on her rounds. (Seattle is thick with rats, by the way. The stories I could tell.) My then-girlfriend told me she knew I would be arriving home in a matter of seconds because the cat, who apparently recognized the sound of my approaching car, would exit the house via the cat door, climb the fence and greet me in the driveway.

I loved that cat. I really did. She was exceptionally affectionate -- she purred, she drooled, she head-butted. I'll never forget her.

Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine" (named after the French author not the singer!) Seemingly indifferent to my presence in the house but always there waiting at the door for me on my return home. He was my buddy and to this day miss him terribly.

 

[GHT]

Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine"

And me about our neighbour's cat, China Doll. China was a pedigree Birman, her point was one of the rarest, a torty tabby. Torty meaning tortoiseshell. As a young cat she would sit on our garage roof and welcome me home every evening, rubbing her social spots around my ankle. "I'm going to come and live with you," she would say, in delightful purrs. When she was about eighteen months old, her staff, (cats don't have owners) split up. To resolve their arguments over the cat and who should have her, they decided to give her to us, if we wanted her. She lived with us for twenty years, passing away without going to the vet for that dreaded injection. She was just a cat, but even typing this, evokes such a reminisce that it makes me well up. "I told you I was going to come and live with you," she would purr, as she made a fuss of me on the bed.

 

[Fading Fast]

Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine" (named after the French author not the singer!) Seemingly indifferent to my presence in the house but always there waiting at the door for me on my return home. He was my buddy and to this day miss him terribly.

I've seen it used here before and think I might even have looked it up before as I had an inkling of its meaning (or I got it from context), but I looked it up anew - nice use of "verklempt -" clearly Yiddish words are going mainstream if "Belfast Boy" from Canada is using them. I love a good cultural melting pot.

 

[Zombie_61]

When I was in my early teens my older sister moved back into our parents' house in order to save some money. She brought with her a cat that was somewhat feral, but affectionate despite it's dislike of being indoors unless it was cold and/or rainy outdoors. Dad's opinion of cats was quite neutral--he expressed very little in the way of "like" or "dislike" for them, so this cat naturally gravitated towards him and it wasn't long before it developed the habit of perching itself on the roof of the house directly over the center of the garage door to greet Dad as he returned home from work every night.

After Dad passed away and Mom remarried, my sister and her husband "rented" the house from Mom (that's a long and complicated story). When Sis moved out and my wife and I took charge of the house (another long and complicated story) we discovered Sis had left us a gift named Kit Kat, another somewhat feral but very affectionate Calico with the longest legs I've ever seen on a cat. Kit Kat was definitely a "mouser", and would often greet us with a gift of her own. Unfortunately, this habit likely contributed to her untimely passing. One night we noticed Kit Kat was limping, and took her to our Vet. We were told it was nothing more than a slight sprain, but that during the check-up they had noticed a couple of teeth that needed to be removed. The next morning they called to tell us Kit Kat had passed on during the night. They had pulled the teeth, but were unable to stop the resultant bleeding and theorized Kit Kat had eaten a mouse that had ingested rat poison, which is essentially an anticoagulant.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I lost a very dear cat when I was a teenager, as a result of rat poison that a neighbor had put out in her yard to do away with gophers. It's been forty years, and I still can't stand to see rat poison in the grocery store.

 

[2jakes]

Her name was Porsche. (No special reason)

She was a Burmese. A tiny delicate cat who was always
around me when I was working on a painting.
Not too cute looking, but to me she was.
I included her in a painting I made a while back.

After 10 years, she died recently of Kidney failure.
I buried her in the backyard by her favorite spot.
There was an cement statue of some kind when I moved to this location
years ago.
I thought it would be nice to place it by her side.
I also marked a brick with her name on it.

Today I saw this and thought I’d share it with you guys.

Polo & Porsche were best of friends!

I’m making the most with Polo and having a grand time.
But I know that little furry yellow “barn" cat is going to break my
heart...big time!

 

[belfastboy]

I've seen it used here before and think I might even have looked it up before as I had an inkling of its meaning (or I got it from context), but I looked it up anew - nice use of "verklempt -" clearly Yiddish words are going mainstream if "Belfast Boy" from Canada is using them. I love a good cultural melting pot.

I worked in the carnival for 12 years (from 12-25 years old) and a lot of the slang that was used was Yiddish. I imagine now that many of the old carnies were Jewish. Didn't know it at the time as I did not know what Yiddish was or that it even existed. But things learned early on have a way of sticking with you. And besides that, to my ear, Verklempt is the perfect word to describe that emotional state. I have a number of Jewish friends that just look at me strange when I throw in the odd Yiddish in to the conversation. But none of them have yet to accuse me of cultural appropriation......I suspect they just think I am quaint.